INTRODUCTION

T IS A SAD BUT INCONTROVERTIBLE FACT THAT the world stands in profound ignorance of the King Squid—and the related festival. Although some might say that more has become known of this creature than evidenced by the mistakes contained in a few naturalist guides published abroad, I am not among their number. To my wandering eye, such errors of fact have multiplied, as have the inaccurate estimates of the number of the King Squid’s tentacles. Firstly, squid have both tentacles and arms. Secondly, the arms do not number five, six, seven, nine, ten, or, most absurdly, fourteen—as suggested by the no doubt severely landlocked Dr. Alfred Kubin, a man who probably also thinks he himself has seven arms and no leg to stand on. The correct number of squid limbs is ten—eight arms and two tentacles—and it is from the foundation of this tenant of fact that all else in this institution shall build. The tentacles, of course, distinguish themselves from the arms by their ingenious hooks, with which they grip prey in a manner improbable for the arms.

From these examples, and such grievous ignorables as “squid is my favorite kind of fish,” a statement I overheard Madame Tuff’s farctated daughter proclaim from an adjacent table in the cafeteria just last Thursday, it should be clear that before we approach the mad misconceptions of the Festival’s history and associated customs, we must first disperse current layperson fogginess about the squid itself.1

Firstly, the squid does not “lay its eggs on the banks of the muddy River Moth in the Spring, whence they hatch in late Autumn and pull themselves by means of proto-tentacles and their scrappy little beaks into the water” as has been suggested by the jarkman Leo Pulling in his crapulous treatise “An Account of the Squidlings’ First Hours by the Banks of the Great River,” published in that soggy sack of lies known as The Ambergris Journal of Speculative Zoology.

Secondly, although pustulated by a certifiable army of morons, including Blas Skinder, Volmar Gort, Maurice Rariety, Frank Blei, and Nora Kleyblack, the King Squid is not related to any of the lesser squid. It is not related to the Morrow Barking Squid, the Stockton Burrowing Squid, the Exploding Kalif Squid, the Detachable Mandible Squid, the Truffidian Monk’s Head Squid, the Fallowpine Honking Squid, the Burning Leopard Squid, the Myopic Slorvorian Howling Squid, the Northern Batwinged Squid, the Eastern Red-faced Mongoose Squid, the Three-Eyed Leaf Squid, the Scintillating Button Squid, the grossly-named Daffed Dancing Sapphire Squid, or even the Nicean Scuttlefish.²

It is none of these things—nor related to any of them—I must repeat for those of you who may have lost the thread or are hard of reading.

MISS FLOXENCE’S PRETTY THEORIES

I realize at this point that some readers may think it important for me to say what the King Squid is rather than what it continually is not. However, I am not yet finished with my essential ablutions, which must be completed to purge the reader of the impure negative energy created by so many madcap theories.

For we have yet to encounter the pathologically inane and scientifically unsound utterances of one Edna Floxence, primarily remembered as the unbalanced astrologer of the Banker-Cappan Trillian, but whom, under Trillian’s auspices, suborned the public’s attentions in such a way that certain myths engendered there continue to feast upon the brains of Ambergrisian school children to this very day. The Strange World of the Freshwater Squid is only trumped in its bilious and breezy antidotes for the truth by The Mysteries of the Freshwater Squid Revealed: six hundred continuous pages of spurious text that no true squidologist can read today without bleeding profusely from the nose, ears, and mouth.³

The problem, for one, is that in amongst the straitjackets of commonsense in the closet of her looney-ness, Miss Floxence makes the amazing claim to have “swum with the squid on a daily basis for an entire summer” in order to learn their secrets. The dust jacket for The Strange World even sports an engraving of Miss Floxence in a fetching frock, a petticoat bathing suit made all of frills and dangling tangles.

Why should the foolish Miss Floxence’s claim seem so bogus? For two reasons: (1) At the time of setting herself adrift like so much floppery amongst the no doubt perturbed (and forever traumatized) squid, the River Moth’s silt content was higher than it had been in years, thus ensuring that any swimmer in those mad murky waters could hardly have seen their own mud-sloppy hand in front of their wet leaf-obscured face, let alone observed and documented over one hundred complex mating rituals, alarm strobes, feeding frenzies, and “quaint ancestral games” and (2) In her frilly petticoat bathing suit and with her pale skin and bulbous eyes, Miss Floxence bears an uncanny resemblance to the common fopgrinder, a fish in the toxicana family. This fish, with its frilly fins and dead white pallor, is the King Squid’s favorite delicacy.⁴ One can only imagine the eye-popping jubilant salivation of a hungry pack of teenage King Squid upon encountering a fopgrinder of such magnificent size and proportions.

No, I’m afraid that Miss Floxence never swam with the squid—this delusion is not supported by the evidence. Even supposing clear visibility and a bathing suit not as likely to trigger close-up observations of squid eating habits, the reader must keep in mind that a King Squid routinely reaches speeds of 14 knots. I doubt the flouncy Miss Floxence could reach one knot on a really ambitious day.

We must thus jettison and watch float out of sight, perhaps sparing a curt wave, all of Miss Floxence’s pretty theories, from the idea of squid changing partners every three months (a popular practice among humans in Ambergris at the time), to the ridiculously complex courtship rituals that combined the worst attributes of a spasmodic seizure with the most daring escapades from a romance novel, topped off by a very optimistic use of tools. (Owning up to your crimes is, as they say, very important for redemption. Dear Miss Floxence has yet to achieve that state of grace and, undiscovered letters and notes notwithstanding, may never achieve it.)

BLITHERING ANECDOTAL EVIDENCE

Early eyewitness accounts range from the choicest pulpatoons to the worst trillibubs of information. Such inaccuracies should be put aside along with our alphabet blocks, mother’s too-frequent goodnight kisses, and therapy sessions.

A single example should suffice to catalog a mountain of mariner anecdotes, this selection ripped from a book actually paid for by the Society of Morrowean Scientists Abroad, entitled Squidologist Enoch Sighly’s and Doctor Bernard Povel’s Journey Up the River Moth by Way of Native Canoe and Indigenous Ingenuity, Culminating in a Boat Wreck, a Near Escape, Alcoholism, and Some Unfortunate Negotiations with the Aforementioned Natives:

A wondrous Fish or Beast or Other Creature that was lately Killed or Speared or Shot washed up by its own Accord, Being Dead, on a nearby Sandbank on the 20^th Day of our Expedition. We bade the curiously mirthful Natives Heave To! And when they did not, Asked Again, that we might Examine the Specimen. It had two Heads and ten Horns and on eight of the Horns, it had 800 Fleshy Bumpies; and in each of Them, a set of Teeth, the said Body bigger than three Cows of the Largest Size and with the Abnormous Horns being of almost 40 hoofs in length. The Greater Head carried only the Horns and two very large Eyes, much pecked by the birds that the natives call Birds. And the Little Head thereof carried, in addition to an Unwholesome Stench and an Odd Putrefaction, a Wondrous Strange Mouth and two Tongues within it, which had the Unnatural Power to draw itself out or into the Body as Necessity required. Other remarkable things observed in the Monster must be said to include its reddish Colored Wrapper sticking fast to the back thereof, and loose laps on both sides, white and red throughout. As well as Blubberous Skin that the Natives will not touch. It hath the most Monstrous Nose ever seen within or without the World.

From the fractured description of a “fish or beast or other creature” to the “bumpies,” the “horns,” the “little head” (clearly a funnel), the “tongues,” and the “wrapper,” not to mention the comically mis-diagnosed “laps,” it becomes simultaneously clear that the “fish or beast or other creature” in question is a King Squid and that the Society of Morrowean Scientists Abroad was unwise to choose as observers the Fatally Unobservant.⁵

At least in such accounts, however, we come closer to the beast itself, the life’s blood of Ambergris, the bounty of plenty, the squidologist’s beakish wet dream, the freshwater monster known simply as “King Squid.”